SCAM ALERT: Joy of Eating May Starve Your Wallet

Tuesday, 31 January 2017 02:11

The Joy of Eating Diet is one of the newer so-called diets peddled on the Internet. Most of these Internet-based diet plans all offer significant weight-loss or body-shaping results, but don’t believe it. This most recent one claims you can 60 pounds in a month, but declines to offer any specifics about its “system”. The claims are directly targeted to these unscrupulous marketers’ target market: women who are insecure about their bodies. As you’ll read below, you are all getting played by clever, but greedy, marketers.

If this claim looks familiar, it probably is — it is almost identical to the questionable other brain health offerings also hawked on the Internet — and it was probably conjured up by the same marketers. In some cases, one marketer may be offering a host of related products. A guy named Clayton Nee, for example, boasts that he has created Disease Less, Memory Healer, Weight Destroyer and Pound Melter. They almost all charge the mysteriously-set price of $37-39. (We’ve reviewed some of these scams and they are laughably bad) Here’s how it works: you are treated to a videomercial that touts the “proven way to lose weight; many of them are targeted specifically at women. Is it a scam? Is it a rip-off? Does it work? You’ll never find out, largely because of an increasingly pernicious Internet industry that uses fake product review sites to hide customer reactions. You’ll also never be able to find out about the credentials of the authors — none apparently exist on the Internet, nor are they provided at his own alleged web site. So, should you spend the $39? We recommend not, for the following reasons:

There’s a reason this sales pitch is slick — they spend a lot of marketing money to get it to you. Who is paying for that? You are. And, like many scammers, they are using Clickbank to sell their ebook so don’t assume you’ll get a refund. “Rock solid guarantee”…..don’t bet on it. The scammers bet on the fact that most consumers won’t seek refunds until after the 60-day period expires. In fact, they count on it.

If you look for a review of the product, you are deluged with lots of fake review or “scam” sites that simply direct you to the main sales site or offer some officious pablum talking about how the product is highly rated or recommended. The marketers for this service pay 50% commission for any referrals they generate. So these “affiliate marketers” create create fake review sites which effectively thwart any customer who is looking for real reviews. It is also a tactic to obscure any customers who have posted complaints or alerts about fraudulent claims. This affiliate marketing trick makes it very difficult for consumers to detect this and other such scams, As one persevering blogger has noted, scam artists rely upon these fraudulent reviewers to be using tags like: “does it work?”, “is it a scam?” or “verified review” to suck unsuspecting consumers into this fraud. In the case of the Joy of Eating Diet , they are offering affiliate marketers the 50%, meaning of the $39 you fork over to these fraudsters, they are getting almost $20 — see below:

In the case of the Joy of Eating Diet, the alleged author of this plan may not even exist. The author’s name is allegedly Petia Raeva But they offer no qualifications or credentials about the author. TIP OFF: If the creator of a diet won’t offer credentials, it tells you something about the credibility of the “system”; there is none.

Perhaps most importantly, there is an abundance of free or low-cost diets available on line. Sadly,most all of them don’t work. Fad diets been around for so long that we lose weight just calculating all of the weight loss schemes out there. They are all appealing because they make it look as though others have succeeded. But be aware that the only fat that melts away is whatever surplus existed in your checking account. In fact, fad diets that promise dramatic results often can be dangerous. Please know that no matter how well-intentioned you are, without a commitment to exercise and substantial lifestyle changes, you likely won’t succeed in maintaining any weight loss. And if you have that commitment or will-power, then just about ANY diet will succeed. You don’t have to pay $40 for the information. Begin by going to this free and reputable website and then follow-up with your doctor to make sure that the diet you’ve chosen will work for you. Another way is to use a high-protein diet or meal replacements; that’s one of the reasons why the Paleo Diet has proven so effective.

Another is through gradual weight-loss plans that change your lifestyle, and not just your calories. Perhaps most importantly, these are free or low-cost diets available on line. Please know that no matter how well-intentioned you are, without a commitment to exercise and substantial lifestyle changes, you likely won’t succeed in maintaining any weight loss. And if you have that commitment or will-power, then just about ANY diet will succeed. You don’t have to pay $40 for the information. Begin by going to the Mayo Clinic’s free and reputable website. The medical experts at the Clinic have fashioned a thoughtful and time-tested plan that has worked for untold numbers of people. Then follow-up with your doctor to make sure that the diet you’ve chosen will work for you.

Here are some additional free and reputable dieting and weight-loss resources for you on the Net:

GM Diet – It’s not really a General Motors-designed diet plan. It’s actually a short one-week detox program. But it could be a useful starter to a major personal diet reboot. Linora Low gives a helpful (and free) step-by-step video and written guide to how to do this detox program.

The Lose Weight Diet – It does what many of the diet scammers do (take free information and distill it down to 3 easily understood phases) but he actually offers it for free!

Our bottom line: you don’t have to spend $39 to get information about how to lose weight. And beware ANY Net-based sales pitch that has uncredentialed, slick video presentations with no independent reviews. It may not be a scam, but it is probably a rip-off because it is overpriced for what it is offering. In this case, there’s lots of good diet information in the marketplace offered at a fraction of the cost of most weight loss schemes. Save your hard-earned money.

One additional warning: once you give them your money, you’ll be tagged as “meat”. Once they know that you’ll fall for this pitch, the same marketers will be coming back to you over and over and over for other such pitches. So understand that if you pay these marketers anything….let alone $39…..they’ll continue to hound you with more slick schemes designed to prey on your fears and concerns. Don’t open your door or wallet to them.

New Year’s resolutions. Ugh! Yes, it is that time of year when exercise equipment and gym membership sales surge and people make promises/commitments/vows/blood oaths/swear to lose weight. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Red Mountain Weight Loss, Medifast. They are selling you the goal you are wanting. You want to lose weight or cleanse your body- they want to sell you their system. The most common mistake made by those bloody oath-swearing commitment makers is they set the wrong goals. They’ll spend money (needlessly) and set unreasonable (or distasteful) objectives to detoxify, cleanse or rid their body of whatever. So many of these detox systems are totally useless.

There’s only one thing that really works: planning. And it has to be your plan that fits you. We recommend adapting a lifestyle that works for you. For example, we think there’s a lot of common-sense and good science supporting a Pegan or Mediterranean diet. We also that Jamie Oliver’s Superfood lifeplan makes a lot of sense. But each of these lifestyle plans requires, first and foremost, planning. That’s the secret behind achieving your New Year’s resolution. Start with making a meal preparation list and a corresponding shopping list each day. You can even have fun and create a “menu” template that you can fill in, weekly, with your planned meals

We’ve created a chart that offers what we’ve learned so far about the foods you should chew and what foods to eschew:

GOOD TO CHEW

WHAT TO ESCHEW

Blueberries – Bursting with antioxidants. Nature’s uber food.

Strawberries – Gave been hybridized into flavorless, rock-hard lumps of cellulose

Beef & Pork – Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse? Did you ever watch Babe? C’mon.

Honey – It’s good enough for baby bees, why not for you? An alternative: Stevia. A very cool herb.

Sugar – Almost as addicting as cocaine but with more calories. Avoid unless it is in dark chocolate.

Veggies – If its green, it’s keen. …unless it is spoiled. Take it easy on the starchy veggies…and learn to love yams.

Processed Foods – All convenience, no class.

H2O – Drink a lot and drink it often.

Soda – View it as liquid cocaine.

And for those who don’t like to read charts, here it is in one paragraph: Eat blueberries. Exercise. Eat fish (that isn’t endangered). Eggs are OK too. Exercise. Eat dark chocolate. Drink red wine, but not too much. Exercise. Eat lots of greens and other veggies. Drink a lot of water (throw some lemon or lime in it). Exercise. Get enough sleep. Then exercise. Repeat daily. Oh yeah, and floss. Get rid of your gym membership and diet plans and spend your hard-earned money on really fresh, nutritious food. For those people who live in Southern California, you might want to try out a food delivery service called Paleo Delivers.

GM Diet – It’s not really a General Motors-designed diet plan. It’s actually a short one-week detox program. But it could be a useful starter to a major personal diet reboot. Linora Low gives a helpful (and free) step-by-step video and written guide to how to do this detox program.

The Lose Weight Diet – It does what many of the diet scammers do (take free information and distill it down to 3 easily understood phases) but he actually offers it for free!

CDC Research on Portion Size – A 2006 Center for Disease Control study that documents how salty, high-fat, high-calorie foods have infiltrated our diets, in part, because portion sizes have increased. You’ll never look at a menu the same way again after reading this very accessible evaluation.

But the most important free diet information you can find is about the dangers of sugar and processed foods. There are tremendous numbers of articles about these two health scourges, including a number of free articles at this website. But if you really feel compelled to spend money about how to lose weight, the two best resources currently available are: “Mindless Eating” by Brian Wansink and David Kessler’s “The End of Overeating” . Both books are available on the Internet for a few bucks if you are OK with a used (previously read) version.

Wansink’s book documents how we often manage to eat hundreds of extra calories every day without gaining any extra satisfaction or even knowing that we’ve eaten them. Over time, this easily translates into weight gains of 10 pounds or so each year. He demonstrates how people will eat more food based on cues that we don’t even recognize we are responding to. One of these cues is quantity; if there is more food available, we will eat more. Another cue is variety; if there are more different types of food, or they are presented in a mixed up assortment, we will eat more. This type of mindless eating often occurs whether we are actually still hungry or not. You can painlessly and knowingly lose 10 pounds every year, simply by reversing the bad habit. Rather than consuming extra calories that bring you no greater pleasure or satisfaction, eliminate this mindless ‘margin’ of calories.

His common-sense suggestions include:
* Eat until you’re 80% full. You may be surprised to find that you are, in fact, completely satisfied at this point.
* Dish out 20% less than you think you want. Same principal as above, just a different variation of it. Put less on your plate to begin with, so you don’t feel the urge to ‘clean your plate’. Out of a 2000 calorie day, you just saved yourself 400 calories. In just over a week, that’s a pound of fat lost. And you probably didn’t even notice the change!
* Put everything you want to eat on your plate at once, including dessert. This will give you a true visualization of how much you are packing away at one sitting, rather than having two or three servings and not seeing how much it adds up to.
* Use small serving dishes and tall, slender glasses. An easy way to fool the mind into thinking you are getting more.
* Mind habitual eating routines. For me, this is a bowl of ice cream after dinner. It doesn’t fulfill any need of mine, it is simply habit.
* Don’t deprive yourself – eat your favorite foods, just less of them. This is my very favorite rule, because I will never change my eating habits if it means eliminating the delicious foods that I love. However, I can easily eat less of the foods that are higher in calories, and still get the same pleasure without the excess.